Two weeks ago, I put up this post on Cedric Arnold's "Yantra: The Sacred Ink,"
which is, as I previously wrote, an exceptionally beautiful series of portraits and documentary
photography -- a product of four and a half years of travel throughout
Thailand to fully explore Yantra, or Sak Yant. Yantra are sacred marks performed
by monks in Thailand in which the wearers believe that the tattoos are
imbued with magic, offering protection and even bestowing certain
powers.

Showing the tattooing process and ceremonies attached to the tradition, Cedric Arnold recently posted this 4:34 minute documentary short (embedded above), which uses footage shot between 2008 and 2014, and includes incredibly powerful scenes of "Khong Khuen," states of trance that tattooed devotees enter
when "possessed" by the spirit of their tattoos, as Arnold writes.

The full version of the film will be released online at a later date, and is currently being screened at the "Tatoueurs, tatoues" exhibit at the Museum du quai Branly in Paris until Oct 2015.

Since the inception of this blog, I have shared posts on Sak Yantor Yantra tattoos -- sacred marks performed by monks in Thailand in which the wearers believe that the tattoos are imbued with magic, offering protection and even bestowing certain powers. Yantra tattoos hold a special fascination for me, not just for the beautiful iconography, but the ceremony, culture and beliefs that surround them.

Every year, at the Buddhist temple in Wat Bang Phra, about 30 miles west of Bangkok, Thailand, devotees gather to receive these magic tattoos at the Wai Khru ceremony. Also present are journalists and photographers seeking to document it all.

One such photographer who has truly captured the power of Yantra and the Wai Khru is French/British photographer Cedric Arnold, who is based in Bangkok. Arnold's "Yantra: The Sacred Ink" is an exceptionally beautiful series of portraits and documentary photography -- a product of four and a half years of travel throughout Thailand to fully explore Yantra, from the festivals to rare tattoos only found in certain regions. Arnold shared with Slate magazine some of what he learned in this journey:

"The ink is traditional Chinese ink but there's ash, snake venom, all
sorts of things," Arnold said. "It's very much a voodoo mix, sort of a
witches' brew in a way. There are some really wild rumors about certain
tattoo masters who have all sorts of crazy things in there. One liquid
people describe as corps oil, harvested from dead bodies."

Getting access to this world involved overcoming one special hurdle.

"If you're not tattooed yourself in certain tattoo worlds, people
will be very suspicious and not let you in. I explained this was a
personal project, and I wanted to understand things. When they asked me
why I didn't have tattoos, I said, 'I don't belong to this belief
system, so I think it would be disrespectful for me to get one.' "

There have been a number of posts on this blog devoted to Sak Yant, sacred tattoos, performed by monks in Thailand. The yantras, mystical diagrams, on skin are not only beautiful, but for many, the tattoos bestow upon the wearer super-human powers.

The book begins with an up-close look into the Wai Khru ceremony at the Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple: "Uaaahh! The man is running straight at me, his face contorted into a
thousand agonies. His bare, heavily tattooed chest gleams with sweat. He
screams at the sky, he vomits anger, but he's rushing directly ahead." The frenzied text, like the tattooed man, soon calms and the reader is then led into the studio of Achan Thoy (pictured below), "a highly respected Dabot Ruesi, a hermit sage of Hindu origin, known as a Rishi or Yogi in India, a man with the power to apply sacred and
magic tattoos to a devotee's skin." The scene painted in that studio is indeed magic, with incantations, katas, and of course blood. It is not a mere tattoo appointment. It is a ritual.

Tracing the roots of the ritual, the first chapter of Sacred Skin goes back thousands of years in describing Sak Yant designs and the beliefs behind them, particularly beliefs that the tattoos protect wearers against physical attack and further their strength -- beliefs that are still commonly held today. According to the book, it's because of this that many Thai people "disapprove of the sacred tattoos, ridiculing them as superstition and branding Sak Yant as part of the perceived backwardness of Thailand's rural population." Moreover, like in so many other parts of the world, the tattoos are heavily associated with Thailand's criminal underground.

Yet, as the authors explain, there are many layers to these spiritual tattoos. Most importantly, the monks who create them see Sak Yant as "silent and powerful reminders of a righteous path that all of us, whether we wear yant or not, should aspire to follow."

Chapter II on these tattoo masters and their devotees is especially compelling. A portrait of each is presented along with a short handwritten note by that person discussing the art.

Sacred Skin then comes full circle in Chapter IV, with even more intense photography from the Wai Khru celebration. The book itself is almost a seamless journey into Thai tattoo culture. I highly recommend it.

Yesterday, a number of news agencies, including the Global Post, reported that Thailand's Ministry of Culture is considering a ban on tattooing sacred Buddhist and Hindu symbols on foreign tourists. The National News Bureau of Thailand offered this explanation:

Citing a survey in Phuket Island, Culture Minister Nipit Intarasombat admitted that a number of foreigners coming to Thailand are interested in having their skin tattooed with Buddha images or Hindu god Ganesh in several parts of their bodies such as arms, legs, ankles or chests.

The Minister indicated that using religious objects as tattoo patterns
is inappropriate according to the Thai tradition and culture as well as
affect the faith of people toward those religions.

Religious tattoo patterns are very popular among foreign tourists and
can be as expensive as 20,000 baht each. Some of the tourists deem
religious tattoo patterns a fashion without any religious respect while
some probably have those tattoos because of ignorance.

The Minister has asked provincial governors across Thailand, especially in popular tourist areas, for their cooperation in cracking down on religious tattoos on foreigners. As noted in the Phuket Gazette, this won't be an easy task. Tattoos on tourists is big business with some costing over upwards of 20,000 baht (over $650).

So it seems I'm a bit late to the party for the latest in tattoo TV. Last month, the testosterone channel Spike TV launched Permanent Mark, a three-episode special that follows 20+-year tattoo veteran "Permanent Mark" Walters as he travels the world experiencing various tattoo cultures. Here's how Mark explains the show:

I've been beating down doors for 7 years in Hollywood, way before
the Miami Ink and L.A Ink and all the other shows about tattoos on TV.
I was trying to get networks to film a show about how I would break
into the subcultures of indigenous tattoos worldwide no matter what
nasty shit I had to eat, what new fever I would catch, or what hole I
had to crap in with a leaf too small to wipe my ass. All these things
would get me respect in certain tribes and cultures because I never
pretend to be tougher than I was, and my humility and stupidity showed
them I was only human. With this, I finally found myself in
all my tattooed glory, sitting in a lot of network boardroom meetings.
This is when producers at Spike TV, who had a filthier mouths than me,
said to me "do what you want, we don't want to see the usual travel
show. Get down and get f*cking dirty." That was all I had to hear.I
wrote 13 ideas and countries down and we made the decision that the
Borneo headhunters (episode 1), the Yakuza in Tokyo (episode 2), and
the Sak Yant tattoos made by the monks in Thailand (episode 3) would
make the most compelling stories. I'm not going lie to you, I
lived in Japan and had my tangles with the Japanese mob as well as
going to Thailand to collect tattoos by a dear friend who happens to be
a monk, but I had never been to Borneo. Although everything I went
through on the show was completely real, I never used my contacts in
any country. It's really important to me that I show you, the audience
how over the last 30 years I was able to infiltrate and be accepted by
different cultures, and not only that, but have had the honor of
earning their mark, in a culture where money doesn't mean a god damn
thing, but your heart, your drinking abilities, killing the odd chicken
or goat, and having the strength to eat the ceremonial sheep eye ball
got me where I am today.

You can watch the full episodes online here. It's compelling TV. Grittier and more SpikeTV-ish than Discovery's Tattoo Hunter with tattoo anthropologist Dr. Lars Krutak, which we loved. Let's see if Permanent Mark has lasting appeal and gets picked up.

The motto of tattoo journalist Travellin' Mick is "Wherever I lay my head is home," and over the years, "home" has often been remote villages where Mick has stayed with indigenous people documenting their culture and body modification practices. While he has written extensively about his experiences for many tattoo magazines, the images and essays have never been collected into one comprehensive volume. He's now setting out to do so.

The first step in his publishing projects is a calendar and traveling exhibit called "In Your Face: The Beauty of Traditional Tattooing." The engaging wall calendar can be ordered via Trust Bodymodification's online store for 20 Euros or by contacting Mick through his website. The US price is $30 and the UK's is 20 BP.

Mick recently showed "In Your Face" in Singapore, and his next exhibition will be at Melbourne's Rites of Passage Festival, January 28th to 30th. He plans to bring the series to cities across Europe throughout 2011.

Describing the motivation behind "In Your Face," Mick says:

Over the last ten years of traveling, I accumulated a vast archive of photographs of traditional tattoos on people from around the world. Even though they were originally taken for documentary purposes, over time I realized that many of the portraits I did have an undeniable aesthetic quality: They tell stories of those people, show their pride and beauty. Often they are the very last ones of their kind, maybe 100 years old, and in their faces and eyes you can clearly see the history of their people.

I wanted to share a few of those pictures to tattoo fans of today, and a calendar is a good format for that because you can bring out a selection of large scale photographs for people to appreciate at home, one by one, month after month. If you want, you can keep or even frame selected images. This way, the people who are depicted will live on, their traditions remembered, even after their bodies and tattoos are gone.

Here are just a couple of images from the calendar and the stories behind them:

"March: I was looking for traditional tattoos in Gujarat province of India near the Pakistan border. I came to an old weaver's house, who was maybe in his 50s. He said: 'Oh, I don't have any tattoos, but my grandmother has!' She was 96 when I took those photos, and she was very alert and funny." "April is a crazy one: This boy is a refugee kid from Myanmar. There is a monastery on the Thailand side of the border, where those kids are taken in, given an education, learn how take responsibilities by training horses and practicing martial arts. They get marked by the head monk, with a bee, because it is a social animal, one that labours for the well-being of the whole society, not just himself."

I'm looking forward to seeing the next stage in this project, a large-format book filled with his photographs with detailed descriptions of the images along with travel stories, his personal philosophy, and more.